NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Flight Crew Arrive at Launch Pad

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 Flight Crew Arrive at Launch Pad

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 arrives at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of launch on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 crew have arrived at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, where SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft stands ready for launch.

In the next few minutes, the crew will take the elevator up the pad's fixed service structure and walk down the air-conditioned crew access arm to the White Room, its final stop before climbing aboard their Dragon crew spacecraft.

Space Launch Complex 40 - or "Slick Forty" - built by the U.S. Air Force, supported its first rocket launch, a Titan IIIC, in June 1965. The pad continued launching Titan rockets for the next forty years. In 2007, SpaceX began leasing the complex and launched its first Falcon 9 from the pad in 2010, opening a new era of commercial spaceflight. Since then, the pad has supported major milestones, including its first crewed mission with Crew-9 in 2024 and the addition of Landing Zone 40, which experienced its first booster landing after launch of Crew-12 in February.

The next liftoff in the pad's long history is slated about three hours from now, at 11:10 a.m. EDT.